


Weaver

by shieraseastar03



Series: ACOMAF [5]
Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: F/M, Wedding Rings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-26 13:16:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19006540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shieraseastar03/pseuds/shieraseastar03





	Weaver

“Amren’s right” Rhys drawled, leaning against the threshold of the town house sitting room. “You are like dogs, waiting for me to come home. Maybe I should buy treats”. Cassian gave him a vulgar gesture from where he lounged on the couch before the hearth, an arm slung over the back behind Mor. Though everything about his powerful, muscled body suggested  
someone at ease, there was a tightness in his jaw, a coiled-up energy that told me they’d been waiting here for a while.

Azriel lingered by the window, comfortably ensconced in shadows, a light flurry of snow dusting the lawn and street behind him. And Amren… Nowhere to be seen. Shiera couldn’t tell if she was relieved or not. She’d have to hunt her down to give her back the necklace soon, if Rhys’s warnings and her own words were to be believed.

Damp and cold from the mist and wind that chased them down from the Prison, she strode for the armchair across from the couch, which had been shaped, like so much of the furniture here, to accommodate illyrian wings. Shiera stretched her stiff limbs toward the fire, and stifled a groan at the delicious heat.

“How’d it go?” Mor said, straightening beside Cassian. No gown today, just practical black pants and a thick blue sweater. “The Bone Carver” Rhys said, “is a busybody gossip who likes to pry into other people’s business far too much”. “But?” Cassian demanded, bracing his arms on his knees, wings tucked in tight. “But” Rhys went on, “he can also be helpful, when he chooses. And it seems we need to start doing what we do best”.

The princess flexed her numbed fingers, content to let them discuss, needing a moment to reel herself back in, to shut out what she had revealed to the Bone Carver. And what the Bone Carver suggested she might actually be asked to do with that book. The abilities she  
might have.

So Rhys told them of the Cauldron, and the reason behind the temple pillagings, to no shortage of swearing and questions, and revealed nothing of what Shiera had admitted in exchange for the information. Azriel emerged from his wreathing shadows to ask the most questions; his face and voice remained unreadable. Cassian, surprisingly, kept quiet, as if the general understood that the shadowsinger would know what information was necessary, and was busy assessing it for his own forces.

When Rhys was done, his spymaster said, “I’ll contact my sources in the Summer Court about where the half of the Book of Breathings is hidden. I can fly into the human world myself to figure out where they’re keeping their part of the Book before we ask them for it”.

“No need” Rhys said. “And I don’t trust this information, even with your sources, with anyone  
outside of this room. Save for Amren.” “They can be trusted,” Azriel said with quiet steel, his scarred hands clenching at his leather-clad sides. “We’re not taking risks where this is concerned,” Rhys merely said. He held Azriel’s stare, and I could almost hear the silent words Rhys added, It is no judgment or reflection on you, Az. Not at all. But Azriel yielded no tinge of emotion as he nodded, his hands unfurling.

“So what do you have planned?” Mor inquired. Rhys picked an invisible piece of dirt off his fighting leathers. When he lifted his head, those violet eyes were glacial. “The King of Hybern sacked one of our temples to get a missing piece of the Cauldron. As far as I’m concerned, it’s an act of war, an indication that His Majesty has no interest in wooing me”.

“He likely remembers our allegiance to the humans in the War, anyway” Cassian said. “He  
wouldn’t jeopardize revealing his plans while trying to sway you, and I bet some of Amarantha’s cronies reported to him about Under the Mountain. About how it all ended, I mean”. Cassian’s throat bobbed. When Rhys had tried to kill her.

Rhys said, “Indeed. But this means Hybern’s forces have already successfully infiltrated our lands, without detection. I plan to return the favor”. Mother above. Cassian and Mor just grinned with feral delight. “How?” Mor asked. Rhys crossed his arms. “It will require careful planning. But if the Cauldron is in Hybern, then to Hybern we must go. Either to take it back... or use the Book to nullify it”.

Some cowardly, pathetic part of Shiera was already trembling.

“Hybern likely has as many wards and shields around it as we have here” Azriel countered. “We’d need to find a way to get through them undetected first”. A slight nod. “Which is why we start now. While we hunt for the Book. So when we get both halves, we can move swiftly, before word can spread that we even possess it”.

Cassian nodded, but asked, “How are you going to retrieve the Book, then?”. Shiera braced herself as Rhys said, “Since these objects are spelled to the individual High Lords, and can  
only be found by them, through their power... Then, in addition to her uses regarding the handling of the Book of Breathings itself, it seems we possibly have our own detector”.

Now they all looked at the princess. She cringed. “Perhaps was what the Bone Carver said in regard to me being able to track things. You don’t know... ”, her words faded as Rhys smirked. “You have a kernel of all our power, like having seven thumbprints. If we’ve hidden something, if we’ve made or protected it with our power, no matter where it has been concealed, you will be able to track it through that very magic”.  
“You can’t know that for sure” she tried again. “No… but there is a way to test it.” Rhys was still smiling. “Here we go” Cassian grumbled. Mor gave Azriel a warning glare to tell him not to volunteer this time. The spymaster just gave her an incredulous look in return.

She might have lounged in her chair to watch their battle of wills had Rhys not said, “With your abilities, you might be able to find the half of the Book at the Summer Court, and break the wards around it. But I’m not going to take the Carver’s word for it, or bring you there without testing you first. To make sure that when it counts, when we need to get that book, you… we do not fail. So we’re going on another little trip. To see if you can find a valuable object of mine that I’ve been missing for a considerably long time”.

Alec’s eyes met his father’s in a silent question. Rhys nodded. “Shit” Mor said, plunging her hands into the thick folds of her sweater.

“Where?” Shiera demanded. It was Alec who answered. “To the Weaver”.

Rhys held up a hand as Cassian opened his mouth. “The test” he said, “will be to see if Shiera can identify the object of mine in the Weaver’s trove. When we get to the Summer Court, the High Lord who received it might had spelled his half of the Book to look different, feel different”.

“By the Cauldron, Rhys” Mor snapped, setting both feet on the carpet. “Are you out of your…?”. “Who is the Weaver?” Shiera pushed, excited for one moment, wanting to know more about that new trip. “An ancient, wicked creature” Azriel said, and the princess surveyed the faint scars on his wings, his neck, and wondered how many such things he’d encountered in his immortal life. If they were any worse than the people who shared blood ties with him.

“Who should remain unbothered” he added in Rhys’s direction. “Find another way to test her abilities”. Rhys merely shrugged and looked to the green-eyed female. To let her choose. Always, it was always her choice with him these days.

She gnawed on her lower lip, weighing the risks, feeling a kernel of fear, of emotion. “The Bone Carver, the Weaver... Can’t you ever just call someone by a given name?”. Alec chuckled, and Mor settled back in the sofa cushions. Only Rhys, it seemed, understood that it hadn’t entirely been a joke. His face was tight. Like he knew precisely how tired she was, how she knew she should be quaking at the thought of this Weaver, but after the Bone Carver, what she had revealed to it...

Rhys gave her a wicked grin, “What about adding one more name to that list?”. She lifted her brows. “Emissary” Rhysand said, ignoring his cousin. “Emissary to the Night Court… for the Summer Court… and the human realm”.

“There hasn’t been one for five hundred years, Rhys” Azriel brathed and Alec replied softly, “There also hasn’t been a human-turned-immortal since then, either”. Rhys met his son’s gaze and nodded, thankfully. “The human world must be as prepared as we are, especially if the King of Hybern plans to shatter the wall and unleash his forces upon them. We need the other half of the Book from those mortal queens, and if we can’t use magic to influence them, then they’re going to have to bring it to us”.

More silence. On the street beyond the bay of windows, wisps of snow brushed past, dusting the cobblestones.

Rhys jerked his chin at Shiera. “You are an immortal faerie, with a human heart. Even as such, you might very well set foot on the continent and be... hunted for it. So we set up a base in neutral territory. In a place where humans trust us, trust you. And where other humans might risk going to meet with you. To hear the voice of Prythian after five centuries”.

“My host family’s estate” the princess suggested after a moment. “Mother’s tits, Rhys” Cassian cut in, wings flaring wide enough to nearly knock over the ceramic vase on the side table next to him. “You think we can just take over her family’s house, demand that of  
them?”. “The land” Mor spoke, reaching over to return the vase to its place, “will run red with blood, Cassian, regardless of what we do with her family. It is now a matter of where that blood will flow, and how much will spill. How much human blood we can save”.

And maybe it made her a cowardly fool, but Shiera said, “The Spring Court borders the wall...”. “The wall stretches across the sea. We’ll fly in offshore” Rhys said without so much as a blink. “I won’t risk discovery from any court, though word might spread quickly enough once we’re there. I know it won’t be easy, but if there’s any way you could convince those queens...”. “I’l try” she let out.

Clare Beddor’s broken and nailed body flashed in her vision. Amarantha had been one of his commanders. Just one, of many. The King of Hybern had to be horrible beyond reckoning to be her master. If these people got their hands on the human people...

“They might not be happy about it, but I’ll make Elain and Nesta do it”. She didn’t have the nerve to ask Rhys if he could simply force Nesta and Elain to agree to help us if they  
refused. She wondered if his powers would work on Nesta when even Tamlin’s glamour had failed against her steel mind.

“Then it’s settled” Rhys declared. None of them looked particularly happy. “Once Shiera darling returns from the Weaver, we’ll bring Hybern to its knees”.

*****************************************************************************************************************************************************

Rhys and the others were gone that night. Where? No one told her. But after the events of the day, she barely finished devouring the food Nuala and Cerridwen brought to her room before she tumbled into sleep.

She dreamed of a long, white bone, carved with horrifying accuracy: her face, twisted in agony and despair; the ash knife in her hand; a pool of blood leaking away from a corpse…

She awoke to the watery light of winter dawn, her stomach full from the night before. A mere minute after she had risen to consciousness, Rhys knocked on her door. She had barely granted him permission to enter before he stalked inside like a midnight wind, and chucked a belt hung with knives onto the foot of the bed. “Hurry” he said, flinging open the doors of the armoire and yanking out my fighting leathers. He tossed them onto the bed, too. “I want to be gone before the sun is fully up”.

“Why?” she asked, still asleep, pushing back the covers. No wings today. “Because time is of the essence”- He dug out her socks and boots. “Once the King of Hybern realizes that someone is searching for the Book of Breathings to nullify the powers of the Cauldron,  
then his agents will begin hunting for it, too”.

“You suspected this for a while, though”. She hadn’t had the chance to discuss it with him last night. “The Cauldron, the king, the Book... You wanted it confirmed, but you were waiting for me”. “Had you agreed to work with me two months ago, I would have taken you right to the Bone Carver to see if he confirmed my suspicions about your talents. But things didn’t go as planned”. No, they most certainly hadn’t.

“The reading” she mumbled, sliding her feet into fleece-lined, thick-soled slippers. “That’s why you insisted on the lessons. So if your suspicions were true and I could harness the Book... I could actually read it, or any translation of whatever is inside”. A book that old might very well be written in an entirely different language. A different alphabet.

He nodded and paused with a hand on the knob. “You should have learned to read no matter what. But yes, when I told you it served my own purposes, it was because of this. Do you blame me for it?”. “No” she said, and meant it. “But I’d prefer to be notified of any future schemes”. “Duly noted”.

Rhys yanked open the drawers and pulled out her undergarments. He dangled the bits of midnight lace and chuckled. “I’m surprised you didn’t demand Nuala and Cerridwen buy you something else”. Shiera stalked to him, snatching the lace away. “You’re drooling on the carpet”. She slammed the bathing room door before he could respond.

He was waiting as she emerged, already warm within the fur-lined leather. He held up the belt of knives, and she studied the loops and straps. “No swords, no bow or arrows” he said. He’d worn his own illyrian fighting leathers, that simple, brutal sword strapped down his spine. “But knives are fine?”. Rhys knelt and spread wide the web of leather and steel, beckoning for me to stick a leg through one loop. She did as instructed, ignoring the brush of his steady hands on my thighs as I stepped through the other loop, and he began tightening and buckling things. “She will not notice a knife, as she has knives in her cottage for eating and her work. But things that are out of place, objects that have not been there... A sword, a bow and arrow... She might sense those things”.

“What about me?”. He tightened a strap. Strong, capable hands, so at odds with the finery he usually wore to dazzle the rest of the world into thinking he was something else entirely. “Do not make a sound, do not touch anything but the object she took from me”.

Rhys looked up, hands braced on her thighs. Bow, he’d once ordered Tamlin. And now here he was, on his knees before her. His eyes glinted as if he remembered it, too.

“Do you like to see me kneeling before you?” he purred, making her blush. “You look like you are proposing” she purred back and he let out a dark laugh. If she knew what she was about to retrieve… If she knew what it truly meant… “Would you like me to?”. Her time to give him a small but mischievous smirk, “Prick”.

*****************************************************************************************************************************************************

“If we’re correct about your powers” he said, “if the Bone Carver wasn’t lying to us, then you and the object will have the same... imprint, thanks to the preserving spells I placed on it long ago. You are one and the same. She will not notice your presence so long as you touch only it. You will be invisible to her”. “She’s blind?”. A nod. “But her other senses are lethal. So be quick, and quiet. Find the object and run out, princess”.

His hands lingered on her legs, wrapping around the back of them. “And if she notices me?”. His hands tightened slightly. “Then we’ll learn precisely how skilled you are”. Cruel, conniving bastard. She glared at him. Rhys shrugged. “Would you rather I locked you in the House of Wind and stuffed you with food and made you wear fine clothes and plan my parties?”. Another little smile. “Go to hell. Why not get this object yourself, if it’s so important?”.

He hesitated for a moment. “Because the Weaver knows me… and if I am caught, there would be a steep price. High Lords are not to interfere with her, no matter the direness of the situation. There are many treasures in her hoard, some she has kept for millennia. Most will never be retrieved—because the High Lords do not dare be caught, thanks to the laws that protect her, thanks to her wrath. Any thieves on their behalf … Either they do not return, or they are never sent, for fear of it leading back to their High Lord. But you ... She does not know you. You belong to every Court”.

  
“So I’m your huntress and thief?” she asked. His hands slid down to cup the backs of her knees as he said with a roguish grin and all his heart, “You are my salvation”.

* * *

 

Rhysand winnowed them into a wood that was older, more aware, than any place she had been. The gnarled beech trees were tightly woven together, splattered and draped so thoroughly with moss and lichen that it was nearly impossible to see the bark beneath.

“Where are we?” she breathed, hardly daring to whisper. Rhys kept his hands within casual reach of his weapons. “In the heart of Prythian, there is a large, empty territory that divides the North and South. At the center of it is our sacred mountain”. Her heart stumbled, and she focused on my steps through the ferns and moss and roots.

“This forest” Rhys went on, “is on the eastern edge of that neutral territory. Here, there is no High Lord. Here, the law is made by who is strongest, meanest, most cunning. And the Weaver of the Wood is at the top of their food chain”.

The trees groaned, though there was no breeze to shift them. No, the air here was tight and stale.

“Amarantha didn’t wipe them out?”. “Amarantha was no fool” Rhys said, his face dark. “She did not touch these creatures or disturb the wood. For years, I tried to find ways to manipulate her to make that foolish mistake, but she never bought it”. “And now we’re disturbing her, for a mere test”. He chuckled, the sound bouncing off the gray stones strewn across the forest floor like scattered marbles. “Cassian tried to convince me last night not to take you. I thought he might even punch me”.

“Why?”, she barely knew him. “Who knows? With Cassian, he’s probably more interested in fucking you than protecting you”. “You’re a pig”. “You could, you know,” Rhys said, holding up the branch of a scrawny beech for me to slip under. “If you needed to move on in a physical sense, I’m sure Cassian would be more than happy to oblige”. It felt like a test in itself. And it pissed her off enough that she crooned, “Then tell him to come to my room tonight”.

Rhys choked and was surprised to find the princess with a grin i on her lips. “If you survive this test” he purred back. She paused atop a little lichen-crusted rock. “You seem pleased by the idea that I won’t”. “Quite the opposite, Shiera darling”.

He prowled to where she stood on the stone. Shiera was almost eye level with him. The forest went even quieter, the trees seeming to lean closer, as if to catch every word. “I’ll let  
Cassian know you’re... open to his advances”. “Good” she replied. A bit of hollowed-out air pushed against her, like a flicker of night. That power along her bones and blood stirred in answer.

She made to jump off the stone, but he gripped her chin, the movement too fast to detect. His words were a lethal caress as he said, “Did you enjoy the sight of me kneeling before you?”. She knew he could hear her heart as it ratcheted into a thunderous beat. She gave him a hateful little smirk, anyway, yanking her chin out of his touch and leaping off the stone.

She might have aimed for his feet. And he might have shifted out of the way just enough to avoid it. “Isn’t that all you males are good for, anyway?”. But the words were tight, near-breathless. His answering smile evoked silken sheets and jasmine-scented breezes at midnight. A dangerous line, one Rhys was forcing her to walk to keep me from thinking about what she was about to face, about what a wreck she was inside.

Anger, this... flirtation, annoyance...

What I was about to encounter, then, must be truly harrowing if he wanted me going in there mad, thinking about sex, about anything but the Weaver of the Wood. “Nice try” she spoke hoarsely. Rhysand just shrugged and swaggered off into the trees ahead. Bastard. Yes, it had been to distract her, but…

She stormed after him as silently as she could, intent on tackling him and slamming her fist into his spine, but he held up a hand as he stopped before a clearing. A small, whitewashed cottage with a thatched roof and half-crumbling chimney sat in the center. Ordinary, almost mortal. There was even a well, its bucket perched on the stone lip, and a wood pile beneath one of the round windows of the cottage.

No sound or light within, not even smoke puffed from the chimney. The few birds in the forest fell quiet. Not entirely, but to keep their chatter to a minimum. And… there. Faint, coming from inside the cottage, was a pretty, steady humming. It might have been the sort of place she would have stopped if I were thirsty, or hungry, or in need of shelter for the night. Maybe that was the trap.

The trees around the clearing, so close that their branches nearly clawed at the thatched roof, might very well have been the bars of a cage. Rhys inclined his head toward the cottage, bowing with dramatic grace. In, out… don’t make a sound. Find whatever object it was and snatch it from beneath a blind person’s nose. And then run like hell.

Mossy earth paved the way to the front door, already cracked slightly. A bit of cheese. And Shiera was the foolish mouse about to fall for it. Eyes twinkling, Rhys mouthed, Good luck.  
She gave him a vulgar gesture and slowly, silently made her way toward the front door.

The woods seemed to monitor each of her steps. When she glanced behind, Rhys was gone. He hadn’t said if he’d interfere if she was in mortal peril. She probably should have asked. She avoided any leaves and stones, falling into a pattern of movement that some part of her body, some part that was not born of the High Lords… remembered. Like waking up. That’s what it felt like.

She passed the well. Not a speck of dirt, not a stone out of place. A perfect, pretty trap, that mortal part of me warned. A trap designed from a time when humans were prey; now laid for a smarter, immortal sort of game. She was not prey any longer, she decided as she eased up to that door. And Shiera was not a mouse. She was a wolf.

She listened on the threshold, the rock worn as if many, many boots had passed through, and perhaps never passed back over again. The words of her song became clear now, her voice sweet and beautiful, like sunlight on a stream.

“There were two sisters, they went playing,  
To see their father’s ships come sailing...  
And when they came unto the sea-brim  
The elder did push the younger in”.

A honeyed voice, for an ancient, horrible song. Shiera had heard it before, slightly different, but sung by humans who had no idea that it had come from faerie throats. She listened for another moment, trying to hear anyone else. But there was only a clatter and thrum of  
some sort of device, and the Weaver’s song.

“Sometimes she sank, and sometimes she swam,  
’Til her corpse came to the miller’s dam”.

Her breath was tight in her chest, but she kept it even, directing it through her mouth in silent breaths. She eased open the front door, just an inch. No squeak, no whine of rusty hinges. Another piece of the pretty trap: practically inviting thieves in. She peered inside when the door had opened wide enough. A large main room, with a small, shut door in the back.

Floor-to-ceiling shelves lined the walls, crammed with bric-a-brac: books, shells, dolls, herbs, pottery, shoes, crystals, more books, jewels… From the ceiling and wood rafters hung all manner of chains, dead birds, dresses, ribbons, gnarled bits of wood, strands of pearls… A junk shop, of some immortal hoarder. And that hoarder…

In the gloom of the cottage, there sat a large spinning wheel, cracked and dulled with age.  
And before that ancient spinning wheel, her back to me, sat the Weaver. Her thick hair was of richest onyx, tumbling down to her slender waist as she worked the wheel, snow-white hands feeding and pulling the thread around a thorn-sharp spindle. She looked young—her gray gown simple but elegant, sparkling faintly in the dim forest light through the windows as she sang in a voice of glittering gold.

“But what did he do with her breastbone?  
He made him a viol to play on.  
What’d he do with her fingers so small?  
He made pegs to his viol withall”.

The fiber she fed into the wheel was white, soft. Like wool, but... Shiera knew, in that lingering human part of her, it was not wool. I knew that I did not want to learn what creature it had come from, who she was spinning into thread. Because on the shelf directly beyond her were cones upon cones of threads, of every color and texture. And on the shelf adjacent to her were swaths and yards of that woven thread, woven, Shiera realized, on the massive loom nearly hidden in the darkness near the hearth.

The Weaver’s loom.

Shiera stepped into the cottage, careful of the scattered debris on the earthen floor. She kept working, the wheel clattering so merrily, so at odds with her horrible song:

“And what did he do with her nose-ridge?  
Unto his viol he made a bridge.  
What did he do with her veins so blue?  
He made strings to his viol thereto”.

Shiera scanned the room, trying not to listen to the lyrics. Nothing. She felt... nothing that might pull her toward one object in particular. Perhaps it would be a blessing if she was indeed not the one to track the Book, if today was not the start of what was sure to be a slew of miseries.

The Weaver perched there, working.

The princess scanned the shelves, the ceiling. Borrowed time. I was on borrowed time, and I was almost out of it.

Had Rhys sent her on a fool’s errand? Maybe there was nothing here. Maybe this object had been taken. It would be just like him to do that. To tease her in the woods, to see what sort of things might make her body react.

And maybe she resented Tamlin enough in that moment to enjoy that deadly bit of flirtation. But Tarquin had been murdered just three months ago… Maybe she was as much a monster as the female spinning before her.

She felt it, then, like a tap on her shoulder.

She pivoted, keeping one eye on the Weaver and the other on the room as Shiera wove through the maze of tables and junk. Like a beacon, a bit of light laced with his half smile, it tugged her.

Hello, it seemed to say. Have you come to claim me at last?

Yes… yes, she wanted to say. Even as part of her wished it were otherwise.

The Weaver sang behind her,

“What did he do with her eyes so bright?  
On his viol he set at first light.  
What did he do with her tongue so rough?  
’Twas the new till and it spoke enough”.

Shiera followed that pulse, toward the shelf lining the wall beside the hearth. Nothing. And nothing on the second. But the third, right above her eyeline... There. She could almost smell his salt-and-citrus scent. The Bone Carver had been correct.

She rose on her toes to examine the shelf. An old letter knife, books in leather that she did not want to touch or smell; a handful of acorns, a tarnished crown of ruby and jasper, and…

A ring.

A ring of twisted strands of silver and surrounded by thirteen solitaire diamonds there was a stone, cut into facets, of deepest, solid blue. Sapphire, but different. She had never seen a sapphire like that, even at jewelries. This one... She could have sworn that in the pale light, the lines of a six-pointed star radiated across the round, opaque surface.

Rhys… This had Rhys written all over it.

He’d sent her here for a ring?

The Weaver sang:

“Then bespake the treble string,  
‘O yonder is my father the king”.

Shiera watched her for another heartbeat, gauging the distance between the shelf and the open door. Grab the ring, and I could be gone in a heartbeat, she repeated to herself. Quick, quiet, calm.

“Then bespake the second string,  
‘O yonder sits my mother the queen’   
Then bespake the strings all three,  
‘Yonder is my sister that drowned me.’ ”

Shiera’s hand was quiet as a final, dying breath as she plucked the ring from the shelf.

The Weaver stopped singing.

*****************************************************************************************************************************************************

Shiera froze, the ring now in her finger, alongside with her wedding ring, the only place where she was sure the Rhys’ ring wouldn’t fall.

The Weaver had finished the last song but… maybe she’d start another. Maybe...

The spinning wheel slowed.

Shiera backed a step toward the door. Then another.

Slower and slower, each rotation of the ancient wheel longer than the last.

Only ten steps to the door. Five.

The wheel went round, one last time, so slow Shiera could see each of the spokes.

Two.

Shiera turned for the door as she lashed out with a white hand, gripping the wheel and stopping it wholly. The door before her snicked shut. She lunged for the handle, but there was none.

Window. Get to the window…

“Who is in my house?” the Weaver said softly.

Fear… undiluted, unbroken fear slammed into the princess, and she remembered. She remembered what it was to be human and helpless and weak. She remembered what it was to want to fight to live, to be willing to do anything to stay breathing…

Shiera reached the window beside the door. Sealed. No latch, no opening. Just glass that was not glass. Solid and impenetrable.

The Weaver turned her face toward the princess.

Wolf or mouse, it made no difference, because she became no more than an animal, sizing up her chance of survival.

Above the weaver’s young, supple body, beneath her black, beautiful hair, her skin was gray, wrinkled and sagging and dry. And where eyes should have gleamed instead lay rotting black pits. Her lips had withered to nothing but deep, dark lines around a hole full of jagged stumps of teeth, like she had gnawed on too many bones. And Shiera knew she would be gnawing on my bones soon if she did not get out.

Her nose, perhaps once pert and pretty, now half-caved in, flared as she sniffed in Shiera’s direction. “What are you?” the Weaver’s said in a voice that was so young and lovely.

Out… out, she had to get out…

There was another way. One suicidal, reckless way.

I did not want to die.  
I did not want to be eaten.  
I did not want to go into that sweet darkness.

The Weaver rose from her little stool. And Shiera knew her borrowed time had run out. “What is like all” she mused, taking one graceful step toward her, “but unlike all?”.

Shiera was a wolf. And she bit when cornered.

She lunged for the sole candle burning on the table in the center of the room. And hurled it against the wall of woven thread, against all those miserable, dark bolts of fabric. Woven bodies, skins, lives.

Let them be free.

Fire erupted, and the Weaver’s shriek was so piercing she thought her head might shatter; thought her blood might boil in its veins. She dashed for the flames, as if she’d put them out with those flawless white hands, her mouth of rotted teeth open and screaming like there was nothing but black hell inside her.

Shiera hurtled for the darkened hearth. For the fireplace and chimney above. A tight squeeze, but wide… wide enough for her. She didn’t hesitate as she grabbed onto the ledge and hauled herself up, arms buckling. Immortal strength… it got her only so far, and she had become so weak... so malnourished… She had let her grief make her so weak…

The soot-stained bricks were loose, uneven. Perfect for climbing.

Faster… She had to go faster. But her shoulders scraped against the brick, and it reeked in here, like carrion and burned hair, and there was an oily sheen on the stone, like cooked fat…

The Weaver’s screaming was cut short as Shiera was halfway up her chimney, sunlight and trees almost visible, every breath a near-sob. She reached for the next brick, fingernails breaking as she hauled herself up so violently that her arms barked in protest against the squeezing of the stone around her, and…

And she was stuck.

Stuck, as the Weaver hissed from within her house, “What little mouse is climbing about in my chimney?”. Shiera had just enough room to look down as the Weaver’s rotted face appeared below. She put that milk-white hand on the ledge, and she realized how little room there was between them.

She pushed against the grip of the chimney, but couldn’t budge.

She was going to die here. She was going to be dragged down by those beautiful hands and ripped apart and eaten. Maybe while she was still alive, she’d set that hideous mouth on her flesh and gnaw and tear and bite and…

Black panic crushed in, and Shiera was again trapped under a nearby mountain, in a muddy trench, the Middengard Wyrm barreling for her. She had barely escaped, barely…

I can’t breathe, can’t breathe, can’t breathe…

The Weaver’s nails scratched against the brick as she took a step up.

No, no, no, no, no…

She kicked and kicked against the bricks.

“Did you think you could steal and flee, thief?”.

Shiera would have preferred the Middengard Wyrm. Would have preferred those massive, sharp teeth to her jagged…

Stop.

The word came out of the darkness of her mind. And the voice was her own.

Stop, it said… She said.  
Breathe.  
Think.

The Weaver came closer, brick crumbling under her hands. She’d climb up like a spider… like she was a fly in her web…

Stop.  
And that word quieted everything.  
She mouthed it.  
Stop, stop, stop.  
Think.

She had survived the Wyrm… and she had been granted gifts. Considerable gifts.

Like strength. She was strong.

She slammed a hand against the chimney wall, as low as she could get. The Weaver hissed at the debris that rained down. Shiera smashed her fist again, rallying that strength.

She was not a pet, not a doll, not an animal.  
She was a survivor, and she was strong.  
She would not be weak, or helpless again.   
She would not, could not be more broken.  
She would not be tamed. She was wild.

She pounded her fist into the bricks over and over, and the Weaver paused. Paused long enough for the brick Shiera had loosened to slide free into her waiting palm. And for me to hurl it at her hideous, horrible face as hard as she could.

Bone crunched and she roared, black blood spraying. But Shiera rammed her shoulders into the sides of the chimney, skin tearing beneath her leather. She kept going, going, going, until she was stone breaking stone, until nothing and no one held me back and I was scaling the chimney. Shiera didn’t dare stop, not as she reached the lip and hauled herself out, tumbling onto the thatched roof.

Which was not thatched with hay at all.  
But hair.

And with all that fat lining the chimney, all that fat now gleaming on my skin... the hair clung to her. In clumps and strands and tufts. Bile rose, but the front door banged open, a shriek following it.

No… not that way. Not to the ground.  
Up, up, up.

Shiera scrambled across that heinous roof, trying not to think about who and what she was stepping on, what clung to my skin, my clothes. A heartbeat later, she had jumped onto the waiting branch, scrambling into the leaves and moss as the Weaver screamed, “WHERE ARE YOU?”.

But the princess was running through a tree, running toward another one nearby. She leaped from branch to branch, bare hands tearing on the wood.

Where was Rhysand?

Farther and farther she fled, the screams chasing her, though they grew ever-distant. And she could hear Rhys’ voice in her head, Where are you, where are you, where are you…?

And then, lounging on a branch in a tree before her, Rhysand drawled, “What the hell did you do?”. She skidded to a stop, breathing raw. She thought her lungs might actually be bleeding. “You...” she hissed but the branch she was on broke and she fell.

Shiera yelled but suddenly she appeared in a huge, massive… Ball? WHat the hell was that? It was like a enormous pool, rounded like a ball, filled with crystalline water and she was inside it. Breathing. She was breathing underwater but how…?

She looked at the tree and could see in Rhys face the same astonished face she might have in her own. Apparently, he didn’t know what to do, how to get her out, so she swam. Up, up, up. Until she reached his extended hand and Rhys pulled her out of the water. As soon as he did, the water bubble disappeared.

Rhys’ wings were flapping as he stared at the wet princess in is arms, his mother’s ring in her finger, with her silver, wedding ring. She opened her mouth, surely to let out a bunch of questions but he winnowed them both. To Velaris. To just above the House of Wind.

They free-fell, and Shiera didn’t have breath to scream as his wings spread wide, and Rhys  
curved them into a steady glide... right through the open windows of what had to be a war room. Cassian was there, in the middle of arguing with Alec about something. Both froze as the High Lord and the princess landed on the red floor.

There was a mirror on the wall behind them, and Shiera glimpsed herself long enough to know why they were gaping. Her face was scratched and bloody, and she was wet but still covered in dirt and grease, boiled fat, and mortar dust, the hair stuck to her, and she smelled…

“You smell like barbecue” Amren said, cringing a bit.

Alec’s gaze was stuck in the sapphire in Shiera’s finger.

The princess was still panting, still trying to gobble down breath. The hair clinging to her scratched and tickled,

“You kill her?” Cassian said. “No” Rhys answered for her, loosely folding his wings. “But given how much the Weaver was screaming, I’m dying to know what Shiera darling did”.

Grease… She had the grease and hair of people on her… Her knees betrayed her and she fell to the floor. The other ones kneeled instantly, checking if she was harmed. Shiera covered her mouth with her hand and felt like she was about to vomit all over the floor. Cassian swore, but she did not vomit, although she could feel the ghost of it there, the remnants of people, the mortar of those bricks…

“She... detected me somehow” she managed to say, “And locked the doors and windows. So I had to climb out through the chimney. I got stuck” I added as Amren’s brows rose, “and when she tried to climb up, I threw a brick at her face”.

Silence.

Alec looked to Rhys. “And where were you?”. His father shrugged. “Waiting, far enough away that she couldn’t detect me”. Shiera snarled at him, “I could have used some help”. “You survived” he said. “And found a way to help yourself”.

From the hard glimmer in his eye, Shiera knew he was aware of the panic that had almost gotten her killed, either through mental shields she had forgotten to raise or whatever anomaly in their bond. He’d been aware of it… and let her endure it. Because it had almost gotten her killed, and she would be no use to him if it happened when it mattered, with the Book. Exactly like he’d said.

“That’s what this was also about” she spat. “Not just this stupid ring” she reached for her finger and held it in her palm, showing it to the High Lord, “or my abilities, but if I can master my panic”.

Rhysand took the silver ring he hadn’t seen in five-hundred years from his mate’s trembling palm. He looked to his son and found his blue eyes on that ring.

Amren shook her head, sheet of dark hair swaying. “Brutal, but effective”. Rhys only said, “Now you know. That you can use your abilities to hunt our objects, and thus track the Book at the Summer Court, and master yourself”. “You’re a prick, Rhysand” Cassian said quietly. Rhys merely tucked his wings in with a graceful snap. “You’d do the same”. Cassian shrugged, as if to say fine, he would.

Shiera looked at her hands, her nails bloody and cracked. And she said to Cassian, “I want you to teach me… how to fight. To get strong. If the offer to train still stands”. Cassian’s brows rose, and he didn’t bother looking to Rhys for approval. “You’ll be calling me a prick pretty damn fast if we train. And I don’t know anything about training humans… how breakable your bodies are. Were, I mean” he added with a wince. “We’ll figure it out”.

“I don’t want my only option to be running” she confessed. “Running,” Amren cut in, “kept you alive today”. Shiera ignored her. “I want to know how to fight my way out. I don’t want to have to wait on anyone to rescue me.”

She faced Rhys, raising her dark brows, her green eyes shining with anger. “Well? Have I proved myself?”. He stared at the ring for a moment, like he was remembering something and gave her a nod of thanks. Then his violet eyes met hers and took a deep breath before saying, “It was my mother’s ring”. As if that were all the explanation and answers owed. “How did you lose it?” she demanded. Another breath. “I didn’t” he let out, “My mother gave it to me as a keepsake, then took it back when I reached maturity, and gave it to the Weaver for safekeeping”.

“So… Kneeling… and a ring”, she let out a small, dark laugh, “Were you proposing?”. she joked. The others choked but Rhysand gave her a wicked grin, “Yes” he laughed, “Yes, indeed”.

The princess shook her head as she took the hand that Rhys was offering to her to stand up.  
“I want a bath” she complained, totally tired. She had barely looked at Rhys before he grabbed her by the waist, flared his wings, and had us soaring back through the windows. They free-fell for five thunderous, wild heartbeats before he winnowed to her bedroom in the town house. A hot bath was already running.

Shiera staggered to it, exhaustion hitting her like a physical blow, when Rhys said, “And what about training your other... gifts?”. Through the rising steam from the tub, she said, “I think you and I would shred each other to bits”. “Oh, we most definitely will”. He leaned against the bathing room threshold. “But it wouldn’t be fun otherwise. Consider our training now officially part of your work requirements with me”. A jerk of the chin. “Go ahead… Try to get past my shields”. She knew which ones he was talking about. “I’m tired. The bath will go cold”. “I promise it’ll be just as hot in a few moments. Or, if you mastered your gifts, you might be able to take care of that yourself”.

She frowned. But took a step toward him, then another.. making him yield a step, two, into the bedroom. The phantom grease and hair clung to the princess, reminded her what he’d done… She held his stare, those violet eyes twinkling. “You feel it, don’t you” he said over the burbling and chittering garden birds. “Your power, stalking under your skin, purring in your ear”. “So what if I do?”. A shrug. “I’m surprised Ianthe didn’t carve you up on an altar to see what that power looks like inside you”.

“What, precisely, is your issue with her?” she inquired, raising her brows again. “I find the High Priestesses to be a perversion of what they once were, once promised to be. Ianthe  
among the worst of them”. A knot twisted in her stomach. “Why do you say that?”. He smiled again. “Get past my shields and I’ll show you”. A taunt. Bait.

Holding his stare... Shiera let herself fall for it. She let herself imagine that line between them, a bit of braided light... And there was his mental shield at the other end of the bond. Black and solid and impenetrable. No way in.

Rhys crossed the two feet between them. “The High Priestesses have burrowed into a few of the Courts… Dawn, Day, and Winter, mostly. They’ve entrenched themselves so thoroughly that their spies are everywhere, their followers near-fanatic with devotion. And yet, during those fifty years, they escaped. They remained hidden. I would not be surprised if Ianthe sought to establish a foothold in the Spring Court”.

“You mean to tell me they’re all black-hearted villains?”. “No. Some, yes. Some are compassionate and selfless and wise. But there are some who are merely self-righteous... Though those are the ones that always seem the most dangerous to me”.

“And Ianthe?”.

A knowing sparkle in his eyes. He really wouldn’t tell her. He’d dangle it before her like a piece of meat…

She lunged. Blindly, wildly, but she sent her power lashing down that line between them. And yelped as it slammed against his inner shields, the reverberations echoing in her as surely as if she would hit something with her body.

Rhys chuckled, “Admirable… sloppy, but an admirable effort”. Panting a bit, she seethed but he said, “Just for trying...”, he approached her and took her hand in his. The bond went taut, that thing under their skin pulsing, and…

There was dark, and the colossal sense of him on the other side of his mental barricade of black adamant. That shield went on forever, the product of half a millennia of being hunted, attacked, hated. The princess brushed a mental hand against that wall. Like a mountain cat arching into a touch, it seemed to purr… and then relaxed its guard. Rhys’ mind opened for her. An antechamber, a single space he’d carved out, to allow Shiera to see…

A bedroom carved from obsidian; a mammoth bed of ebony sheets, large enough to accommodate wings. And on it, sprawled in nothing but her skin, lay Ianthe.

Rhysand felt how Shiera reeled back, realizing it was a memory, and Ianthe was in his bed, in his Court beneath that mountain, her full breasts peaked against the chill… “There is more” Rhys’s voice said from far away as she struggled to pull out. But her mind slammed into the shield, the other side of it. He’d trapped her in here…

“You kept me waiting” Ianthe sulked. The sensation of hard, carved wood digging into her back… Rhysand’s back… as he leaned against the bedroom door. “Get out”. Ianthe gave a little pout, bending her knee and shifting her legs wider, baring herself to him. “I see the way you look at me, High Lord”. “You see what you want to see” he… they...said.

The door opened beside him. “Get out”. A coy tilt of her lips. “I heard you like to play games”. Her slender hand drifted low, trailing past her belly button. “I think you’ll find me a diverting playmate”.

Icy wrath crept through Shiera… Rhys… as he debated the merits of splattering her on the walls, and how much of an inconvenience it’d cause. She’d hounded him relentlessly… stalked the other males, too. Azriel had left last night because of it. And Mor was about one more comment away from snapping her neck.

“I thought your allegiance lay with other Courts”. His voice was so cold. The voice of the High  
Lord. “My allegiance lies with the future of Prythian, with the true power in this land.” Her fingers slid between her legs… and halted. Her gasp cleaved the room as he sent a tendril of power blasting for her, pinning that arm to the bed, away from herself.

“Do you know what a union between us could do for Prythian, for the world?” she said, eyes devouring him still. “You mean yourself”.

“Our offspring could rule Prythian”. Cruel amusement danced through him. “So you want my crown… and for me to play stud?”. She tried to writhe her body, but his power held her. “I don’t see anyone else worthy of the position”.

She’d be a problem… now, and later. He knew it. Kill her now, end the threat before it began, face the wrath of the other High Priestesses, or... see what happened.

“Get out of my bed. Get out of my room. And get out of my Court”.

He released his power’s grip to allow her to do so. Ianthe’s eyes darkened, and she slithered to her feet, not bothering with her clothes, draped over his favorite chair. Each step toward him had her generous breasts bobbing. She stopped barely a foot away. “You have no idea what I can make you feel, High Lord”. She reached a hand for him, right between his legs.

His power lashed around her fingers before she could grab him. He crunched the power down, twisting. Ianthe screamed. She tried backing away, but his power froze her in place… so much power, so easily controlled, roiling around her, contemplating ending her existence like an asp surveying a mouse.

Rhys leaned close to breathe into her ear, “Don’t ever touch me. Don’t ever touch another male in my Court”. His power snapped bones and tendons, and she screamed again. “Your hand will heal” he said, stepping back. “The next time you touch me or anyone in my lands, you will find that the rest of you will not fare so well”.

Tears of agony ran down her face, the effect wasted by the hatred lighting her eyes. “You will regret this” she hissed. He laughed softly, a lover’s laugh, and a flicker of power had her thrown onto her ass in the hallway. Her clothes followed a heartbeat later. Then the door slammed.

Like a pair of scissors through a taut ribbon, the memory was severed, the shield behind Shiera fell, and he saw how she stumbled back, blinking. “Rule one” he told her, his eyes glazed with the rage of that memory, “don’t go into someone’s mind unless you hold the way open. A daemati might leave their minds spread wide for you, and then shut you inside, turn you into their willing slave”.

A chill went down her spine at the thought. But what he’d shown her…

“Rule two” he said, his face hard as stone, “when...”. “When was that” she blurted. Shiera knew him well enough not to doubt its truth. “When did that happen between you?”.

The ice remained in his eyes. “A hundred years ago. At the Court of Nightmares. I allowed her to visit after she’d begged for years, insisting she wanted to build ties between the Night Court and the priestesses. I’d heard rumors about her nature, but she was young and untried, and I hoped that perhaps a new High Priestess might indeed be the change her order needed. It turned out that she was already well trained by some of her less-benevolent sisters”.

Shiera swallowed hard, her heart thundering. “She… she didn’t act that way at...”.

Lucien.

Lucien had hated her. Had made vague, vicious allusions to not liking her, to being approached by her… Had she... had she pursued him like that? Had he... had he been forced to say yes because of her position?

“Rule two” Rhys finally went on, “be prepared to see things you might not like”.

Only fifty years later, Amarantha had come. And done exactly to Rhys what he’d wanted to kill Ianthe for. But he had let it happen to him. To keep them safe. To keep Azriel and Cassian from the nightmares that would haunt him forever, from enduring any more pain than what they’d suffered as children.

Shiera lifted her head to ask him more. But Rhys had vanished.

Alone, she peeled off her clothes, struggling with the buckles and straps he’d put on her… When had it been? An hour or two ago? It felt as if a lifetime had passed. And she was now a certified Book-tracker, it seemed. Better than a party-planning spring wife for breeding little High Lords. What Ianthe had wanted to make her… to serve whatever agenda she had.

The bath was indeed hot, as he’d promised. And she mulled over what he’d shown her, seeing that hand again and again reach between his legs, the ownership and arrogance in that gesture… Shiera shut out the memory, the bath water suddenly cold.


End file.
